Pages

Sunday, October 18, 2015

Welcome to The Fisk & Cock – a Tavern for the Lunatic Bunch

The
predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani is devastated after months under siege by
Islamist forces and airstrikes by a United States-led coalition.

DDGD –
October 19, 2015

Dear colleagues and subscribers, I can definitely use your
help at this stage in order to keep managing my new blog and newsletter and to
expand the scope of my coverage to include some field work as well. Please use
the contact form to reach out
to me with suggestions and/or pledges.

Today’s Post is brought to you by: The Society of Fucking Lunatics
& the Fucked-Up Lunatics Who Listen To Them: are you fucking listening?

“With a little help from his friends – Russia, Iran,
Hezbollah – the Syrian dictator looks set to end the immediate threat to the
regime enclave in Latakia.” So goes the convincing
argument of Jonathan Spyer.

The regime advances represent a
reversal of the trend in the war since the beginning of 2015. The current
fighting, however, appears to be merely a prelude to an upcoming, much larger
offensive.

Indeed, one of the main objectives of the Russian
intervention, backed with Iranian ground troops, is to secure the coastal
enclave, and yes, as Spyer notes, Iranian might need to maintain a permanent
force of occupation on the ground for the foreseeable future in order to keep the
enclave secure. But I think both the Russians and the Iranians have already
foreseen that possibility and are reconciled to it. In fact, they seem to see
in it an advantage.

Still, the Syrian War has seen too much seesawing to expect
the current advance to last. True, the rebels may not be able to retake the
lands they are currently losing any time soon, but that does not mean that the
reestablishment of regime control will usher a return to normalcy. Low
intensity warfare is bound to continue for long. That is, unless these advances
were also accompanied by an intensification of ethnic cleansing. President Obama
predicts
that the ground offensive will fail, because to “the overwhelming majority of
the Syrian people” the regime “is not legitimate.” But, what kind of majority
will exist in the areas currently being retaken? Most the population have
already been “cleansed,” and more cleansing is likely to follow the
reoccupation.

Indeed the Turkish PM has just predicted
that current battles in Aleppo are bound to pave the way for a fresh exodus of
refugees.

*

Caught between Fisk
and a Cocked-up
place, the truth has no chance on earth of being found. Between these two
morons, Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn, still high on their long forgotten and
mostly hallucinated “accomplishments,” Assad might as well be knighted, if not
canonized as a holy saint of Arabist resistance, rather than tried at the International
Criminal Court as the mass murdering psychopathic thug that he is.

The oft-repeated statistics — more
than 4 million have left the country and 8 million are internally displaced —
hardly hint at the physical and psychological demolition of Syria, once a
cultural and intellectual hub of the Middle East.

Still, ever-resilient Syrians
strive to maintain some shreds of social cohesion amid an overriding sense of
insecurity and uncertainty about the future.

… Just a few miles away, however,
on the highway north toward Homs, a visitor encounters an apocalyptic tableau:
Block after block of bullet-riddled apartment buildings and blown-open shops
are now the face of once densely populated suburbs such as Jobar, Qaboun and
Duma. The echo of gunfire and the thud of artillery are heard in the distance.
Soldiers staff small outposts along the highway. Motorists are advised not to
let up on the gas pedal...

The Surreal Adventures of Pu Bear

Putin’s
Syria Gambit Aims at Something Bigger Than Syria. Despite making the
point that “[s]horing up the Assad regime and killing jihadi fighters are not,
of course, the only objectives that Russia is pursuing in Syria,” and that “Moscow’s
intervention is as much about Washington as it is about IS,” Dmitri Trenin
really spell out exactly what that practically means. True, he does note that
the leaderships in Moscow and Beijing are working more closely, and that Putin
is allying himself with Iran and the Shia in the Middle East, while trying hard
to appease the Sunnis both nationally, by showing greater respect for Islam,
and internationally, by increasing high level contacts with the Turks and the
Saudis, but Trenin still fails to spell out the purpose of all these
activities. But, after reading his excellent assessment, the purpose is not too
hard to guess: a kind of imperial restoration that Moscow wants Washington to
accept as legitimate. For Putin cannot hope to be treated as an equal by an
American President if he doesn’t have equal sway on the ground, and on
important global and regional developments. In practical terms, Putin has to
forge new alliances, and conduct a variety of military campaigns, and engage in
the occasional land grab here and there.

Yes, this means that as long as America is perceived
as “weak,” and reluctant to act, as former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations Zalmay Khalilzad described the Obama Administration, the Russians,
Iranians, the Chinese, and all other ambitious autocrats out there, will seek
to take advantage of that. Meanwhile, and as Anne Applebaum has noted, the
Russian show of force coupled with its “charm” offensive continues to make new
friends in Europe, and beyond. Indeed, these new friends are neither
“idiots” nor “provocateurs.” For some, especially those based in Central and
Eastern Europe, it might just be a case of old habits resurfacing, for others,
ideology and political calculations seem to be involved.

*

*** Flash Notice ***

Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution’s Lawfare
Institute has just launched
a direct challenge to Vladimir Putin, the “fraud martial artist” who “only
fights people who are in his power, and they are all taking falls for him.”
It’s exactly for these reasons that Mr. Wittes, a dear friend of mine who is of
sound mind and body, at least as far as I still know, and as far as I can
reliably judge such matters, believes that Putin would refuse to take him on in
a direct mano a mano smackdown. That does not mean, however, that Mr. Wittes is
not serious about his throw of the gauntlet. Just hear what he has to say:

“Man up, dude! Either fight a
reasonably well-trained but not especially expert middle aged martial artist in
a situation in which he's actually allowed to kick your ass without fear of
reprisal, or face condemnation worldwide as a wuss.”

Now if only Putin cared about international
condemnations!

Jihadopolis

With so much focus on Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, on
Sunni Jihadism in general, and the underlying millennialism involved in most of
these cases, Shia Jihadism and millennial beliefs are often neglected, allowing
for some to speak
of an alleged ecumenical streak harbored by Shia and Iranian leaders. In
reality though, the Iranian and the Shia have been struggling with their own
form of Jihadism for decades, and millenarian have afflicted many of their
leaders, include the late Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who lives in expectation of the
eminent arrival of the Mahdi signaling the end of time. This is why this study,
The
Other Apocalypse, by Charlie P. W. Gammell is important. It analyses and
sheds important light on this oft-neglected phenomenon.

*

Meanwhile, the nuclear arms race between Sunnis and Shia
might be about to take an interesting turn, with IS joining the market for the
acquisition of nuclear materials, this time, the potential
sellers are in Moldova. Bear in mind that it is the Center for Strategic
and International Studies that is reporting on this matter, and not some
obscure website.

Refugenics

*** Announcement ***

Starting this fall, The Washington Post
Helping Hand will support national and international human service
organizations in times of great need by aiding their fundraising efforts during
major, unexpected humanitarian crises. To donate, please visit: www.UNrefugees.org/wp

*

While Europe keeps
on struggling with how best to deal
with its migrants and refugees crisis (that is, its sudden case of migraint),
leave it to the masked militias of the town of Zawara in Libya to try
to police their shores and hunt human smugglers, even though the move does
require adjustment to a way of life based on smuggling. While the impact of
this development will remain too small at this early stage to make a serious
dent in the problem, it does highlight the usefulness of helping Libyans
stabilize their country, even if one town at a time.

But as the Zawarans try to adjust their way of to make it
more humane, some in France are charting
a course in the opposite direction. Indeed, the town municipal council of Chalon-sur-Saône, choosing to ban
offering a pork-free option at lunch in its schools. Apparently offering such
an option is a form of “discrimination,” according to the town’s mayor, Gilles
Platret! But, then, the mayor’s position is not a minority one. Former French
president Nicholas Sarkozy and current head of the Les Républicains party also
endorsed the ban in an attempt to pander to growing far-right sentiments in the
country. As such, the issue is bound to fester, as it pertains to something
larger than mere school lunches.

Meanwhile, the Spanish seem to have stumbled
on the right approach, at least as far as the Economist is concerned, when it
comes to stemming the tide of illegal refugees and migrants (refugrants):
cooperate with transit countries.

*

For those still struggling with who’s to blame
for the crisis, a poll in Germany finds that the majority of Syrian refugees blame
the Assad regime for the fighting that drove them out of their cities and their
country. The Wawieh family who settled in Pomona, California, also holds
that belief, with father describing Assad as being the “cause of our misery,
him and his gangsters.”

Quote of the Day

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I
may learn how to do it. Pablo Picasso

No comments:

Post a Comment

Go ahead, patronize me!

IGD: We finally hit a perfect 10. We now offically live in the Age of Total Delirirum

The IGD or the Index of Global Delirium reflects the state of delirium in the world at a particular moment in time using a 1 to 10 measure, with 10 denoting the highest level of delirium. Levels of delirium change on the basis of various current developments such as instability, wars, terrorist activities, elections, sports events, financial meltdowns, leaks of sensitive information, etc. Note:levels of violence and delirium do not always coincide. IGD levels may rise even when violence levels seem to take a downturn.

Dystopia Today: The Home Front

Dystopia Today: The Global Stage

I Am Syria

Educators will find theI Am Syria websiteto be quite useful when it comes to finding audio-visual materials explaining the Syrian Crisis in general and the plight of the Syrian Refugees in particular. The site is maintained by a small team of volunteer educators and receives tens of thousands of visits per months.I am honored to be involved in this effort.

Recent Entries into The Holy Deliricon

Recent Entries into The Holy Delirindex

Recent Observations by Delirian Mundi

Recent Scenes from Theatrum Deliria

Recent Episodes from The Cauldron

Syria: A Fire Within

As anti-Assad demonstrations erupt across Syria, Ammar Abdulhamid, an exiled pioneer of the pro-democracy movement must convince US leaders that they have allies on the ground. Or else those allies, and the entire pro-democracy movement, may forever perish.